It didn't bleed the clock Radio as bed but sure did my boombox in fact washed the whole dial. I'm still hopeing I can get more range on an in house antenna for AM. If not I'd be forced to possibly do something for FM.
That may be more of a receiver function (or lack thereof) than the transmitter.
Well at least I won't feel as bad if I have to move back to FM. I'm gonna try a few more things before that however. I checked my range on AM with a car radio and I didn't do as well as I did with my FM transmitter. Maybe when we figure a better antenna hopefully I'll beat the range of teh FM. But in the city it really is going to take a lot for AM as I'm finding out.
... I checked my range on AM with a car radio and I didn't do as well as I did with my FM transmitter. ...
Some car radios have very poor sensitivity on AM, compared to FM.
Antenna location is critical for both AM and FM. What isn't critical for FM is the ground - but it is absolutely necessary for AM, and the better the ground, the better the range. With the Talking House, you can't add radials, so the ground, no matter where the antenna is mounted, stays constant.
Have you tried getting your Talking House with the wire antenna outside and measuring range, as Radio8z (I think) suggested? It would be relatively easy to thread it up a wooden pole or PVC pipe. I don't believe it's the wire antenna that's the problem - it's where it is installed.
As I've mentioned before, the only way I could get significant range from my Talking Sign was to run the wire antenna outside above the roofline. The Talking Sign stayed indoors, mounted on the wall at ceiling height in the room. It too is grounded by the power connector (in fact, the Talking Sign is just a better made version of the Talking House), and I ran it down the wall to the power outlet.
That installation didn't have the range, say, of my Hamilton Rangemaster, but in some directions (mostly open field), I could hear my signal out to about a mile on my car radio (it had a good AM receiver). Typically, though, 1/4 mile up to about 1/2 mile in the built up areas, depending on noise levels, buildings and line of sight.
Rich: Do you possess a MO Degree?
No, but Carl Blare might have one.
Funny. 🙂
To Timinbovey: Let's say you got a CM-10 that was for Canada. Artisan and me when referring to BETS-1 say 1000uV/M@3meters but the rule is not that...it's 100uV/M@30meters. We have just done the math and figured that is equal to 1000uV/M@3meters but in actual fact that may not be the case. Idea hit me today that to get 100uV/M@30meters you could have more than 1000uV/M@3meters. Could be that the readings you were getting at 3 meters with the CM-10 is compliant with BETS-1 regs?
Would be interesting to see what you read at 30 meters from the antenna vertical(about 100ft).
Could be wrong but could also be right. Decade has the same meter as you and Michael told me they actually measure output for compliance.
The Canadian regulation isn't given at 3 meters and it could be a logarithmic scale that applies to how the signal loses strength the farther away you go.
Just a thought
Mark
My guess would be that Rich has the correct formula to determine what the theoritical field strength at 30 meters would be based on my 3 meter readings. I've always been more of a "hardware and data gathering" kind of engineer and never seem to keep the formulas for these sorts of things at hand. Clearly Rich is the Ace Number Cruncher around here 🙂 I know that it's not a linear ratio of field strength, e.g. it's not half at 6 meters, etc...
*If* I get a chance I'll see if I can talk myself into heading out into the field again. It's kind of a PITA and it takes a good hour or so to set up and get the readings. Odds are in another 6 weeks my test field is going to be covered with snow!
TIB
I remember in Michigan it was around the end of Oct or early Nov that it started to snow and again Snow could effect the test results because as we all know snow is made from Water and guess what Water conducts electricity. AM stations seem to go further sometimes in Snow where as FM has a mixed bag. In winter I've seen the FM bands go dead at times and really light up other times durring the winter. I love tropo in summer at times.
SNOW!!...don't say that.
Thought profanity wasn't allowed on this site!!!
It doesn't come that early does it?
Mark
Mark wrote: Artisan and me when referring to BETS-1 say 1000uV/M@3meters but the rule is not that...it's 100uV/M@30meters. We have just done the math and figured that is equal to 1000uV/M@3meters but in actual fact that may not be the case.
There are an infinite number of solutions to this.
Below is a study showing (approximately) the fields that would exist at various elevations above the earth along a horizontal path from 3 meters to 30 meters from a transmit system. This set of conditions produces ~100 µV/m at an elevation of 6 feet above the earth, 100 feet away
VHF fields vary with the heights of the transmit and receive antennas as well as the path length and many other factors. A system could be compliant when measured at one distance and elevation, but non-compliant when measured at a different elevation at that same distance.
This graphic will take some study to understand, but that might be worthwhile.
OH, heck yeah, especially up here in northern Minnesota. Trick or Treating in snow is not unusual. Most famous is the Halloween blizzard of 1991. Photo attached. I was out taking my kids trick or treating that evening and it was snowing. By morning it looked like the photo. If you Google "Minnesota Halloween Blizzard 1991" you get a lot of pics and new stories.
TIB
The only thing I can understand from Rich's graphic and post is there are many variables but I am more than likely correct that 1000uv/M at 3 meters isn't 100uV at 30 meters. On the graph is the hoizontal blue bar showing 3340uV/m at 3 feet resulting in 97uV/m at 100ft? or is that not it at all?
So if a transmitter is certified for a given field strength that is good only where the measurement was taken.
Best is just to have a meter but as said before the average person won't have an expensive meter that can measure this.
By the way saw this on Ebay.....maybe an affordable meter?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Potomac-FIM-72-Field-Strength-Meter-/161711700993?hash=item25a6c4bc01
Mark